Dax Network, networking and surveillance company, has launched a programme for network engineers aimed at enhancing the skills of young employed engineers and to make the final year students job-ready. Sudha Jagadish, CEO, DAX Networks tells about the plans to address skilled manpower crunch for the networking industry by having tie ups with various educational institutions. In conversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN
Please share the genesis of DAX Network?
Being in the networking industry for more than 25 years and in the networking space, we trust that we have enough knowledge and expertise ranging over many years now. Our contribution to the industry is specialised in the networking space.
Do you think there is enough skilled workforce available in your industry?
Yes, there is not much skilled workforce available these days. There is a huge demand for skilled workforce. We find more of this with the system integrators where actually work has to be done, we find that knowledge is missing. There are vacancies all over but they are not able to find the right candidate. We do have jobs, but it is difficult to find the right people. We are doing this in two phases. For the last two years now, we have gone into IT surveillance, which works traditionally on security but is now going into other areas also like marketing. Its scope is widening now. With thefts and other tragedies happening every day, the demand for IT surveillance across the industry has risen rapidly. We are primarily into education of networking and IT surveillance to the industry partners and also to the educational institutions. We feel that a practical knowledge imparted to the students will help them to be placed better versus some other candidate.
Our education module is not purely theoritical; it gives a lot of insight on realistic case studies that we have handled, and what was your need and what the customer or anyone else would look for. It provides the entire insight for a person to design a solution and also gets a hands-on experience on technical details. It makes the candidate a fulfilled person, gives an insight into the kinds of needs existing in the industry.
What kind of skills do you look for in an engineering student while hiring?
When we hire a fresher, we only look for an attitude to learn and basic knowledge about the subject. Though on the technical front, we would prefer to have a person who is already educated and trained.
Please share your tie ups with educational institutions.
There is two-fold strategy that we are taking in education: one is through the system integration community. The system integrators have network engineers or installers. We offer courses to them. We also have tie ups with engineering colleges and they sponsor their students to attend this course. The primary objective for colleges doing this is that they feel their candidate will be positioned better.
We are actively looking for more tie ups. We also have approached Educomp and trying to have a tie-up with them in imparting education. Right now, our tieup with them is only for the hardware solutions that we provide. However, we look forward to more tie ups.
Please share your plans for the education vertical?
Education is one of our primary verticals. The business comes from the government projects and tenders. All the institutions including government schools and colleges are part of the tender. We provide our hardware solutions to schools and we have more than a lakh schools networked through our products. We have just launched the education line by itself and will be taking it forward actively.
